Dictionary skills

Using a dictionary is a skill you can improve with practice and by following some
basic guidelines. This section gives you a detailed explanation of how to use
the Collins Easy Learning French Dictionary to ensure you get the most out of it.

The answers to the questions in this section are on page 11.

Make sure you look on the right side of the dictionary

The French – English side comes first: you look there to find the
meaning of a French word. The second part is English – French.
That’s what you need for translating into French. (To remind yourself
which side is which, you could remember the phrase French first.)
At the side of every page, you will see a tab with either French –
English or English – French. The French – English side has a blue
tab, the English – French side has a black tab, so you can see
immediately if you’ve got the side you want.

1 Which side of the dictionary would you need to look up to

translate ‘le vélo’ ?

Finding the word you want

When you are looking for a word, for example nouveau, look at the
first letter – n – and find the N section in the French – English side.
Look at page 182. At the top of the page, you’ll find the words
normalement ¡ nouvel. These are the first and last words on that
page. Remember that even if a letter has an accent on it, it makes no
difference to the alphabetical order.

2 Which comes first – ‘nager’ or ‘nécessaire’?

3 Does ‘nouveau’ come before or after ‘Noël ’?
4 Does ‘chou–fleur’ come before or after ‘chocolat’?

© HarperCollins Publishers, 2007

 To help you expand your vocabulary, we also have suggested possible
alternatives in the word power features at the most common
adjectives in English – try looking up big on page 318 and learning
some of the words you could use.

Make sure you look at the right entry

An entry is made up of a word, its translations and, often, example

phrases to show you how to use the translations. If there is more than
one entry for the same word, then there is a note to tell you so. Look
at the following example entries:

flat adjective flat noun

Usee also flat noun Usee also flat adjective
1 plat (fem plate) l’ appartement masc
P a flat roof un toit plat P flat shoes des P She lives in a flat. Elle habite un
chaussures plates appartement.
2 crevé (fem crevée) (tyre)
P I’ve got a flat tyre. J’ai un pneu crevé.

5 Which of the two entries above will help you translate the
phrase ‘My car has a flat tyre’? Look for the two clues which are
there to help you:
> an example similar to what you want to say
> the word ADJECTIVE

Look out for information notes which have this symbol on the left-
hand side. They will give you guidance on grammatical points, and
tell you about differences between French and British life.

Choosing the right translation

The main translation of a word is shown on a new line and is

underlined to make it stand out from the rest of the entry. If there is
more than one main translation for a word, each one is numbered.

Often you will see phrases in light blue, preceded by a white square P.
These show how the translation they follow can be used. They also
help you choose the translation you want because they give you
examples of the context in which it can be used.

© HarperCollins Publishers, 2007

 6 Use the dictionary to translate ‘That’s a very hard question’.

Words often have more than one meaning and more than one
translation: if you don’t get to the station on time, you don’t arrive
on time, but if you say ‘I don’t get it’, you mean you don’t understand.
When you are translating from English, be careful to choose the
French word that has the particular meaning you want. The dictionary
offers you a lot of help with this. Look at the following entry:

pool noun
1 la flaque (puddle)
2 l’ étang masc (pond)
3 la piscine (for swimming)
4 le billard américain (game)

A pool can be a puddle, a pond or a swimming pool; pool can also be

a game. Underlining highlights all the main translations, the numbers
tell you that there is more than one possible translation and the words
in brackets in italics after the translations help you choose the
translation you want.

7 How would you translate ‘I like playing pool ’?

Never take the first translation you see without looking at the others.
Always look to see if there is more than one translation underlined.

Phrases in bold type preceded by a blue or black square p/p are

phrases which are particularly common or important. Sometimes
the phrases have a completely different translation from the main
translation; sometimes the translation is the same. For example:

le dommage noun to go out verb

damage 1 sortir (person)
P La tempête a causé d’importants P Are you going out tonight? Tu sors ce soir?
dommages. The storm caused a lot of p to go out with somebody sortir avec
damage. quelqu’un P Are you going out with him?
p C’est dommage. It’s a shame. P C’est Est-ce que tu sors avec lui?
dommage que tu ne puisses pas venir. It’s 2 s’éteindre (light, fire, candle)
shame you can’t come. P Suddenly the lights went out. Soudain, les
lumières se sont éteintes.

When you look up a word, make sure you look beyond the main
translations to see if the entry includes any bold phrases.

© HarperCollins Publishers, 2007

 8 In a job advert you read that applicants ‘doivent tous passer
une visite médicale’. What must they all do?

Look up ‘visite’ and find the answer as quickly as possible by

skimming down the bold phrases.

Making use of phrases in the dictionary

Sometimes when you look up a word you will find not only the word,
but the exact phrase you want. For example, you might want to say
‘What’s the date today?’. Look up date and you will find:

date noun
1 la date
P my date of birth ma date de naissance
p What’s the date today? Quel jour
sommes-nous?

Sometimes you have to adapt what you find in the dictionary. If you
want to say ‘I play darts’ and look up dart you will find:

dart noun
la fléchette
P to play darts jouer aux fléchettes

You have to substitute je joue for the infinitive form jouer. You will
often have to adapt the infinitive in this way, adding the correct ending
for je, tu, il etc and choosing the present, future or past form. For help
with this, look at the verb tables. On the French – English side of the
dictionary, you will notice that verbs are followed by a number in square
brackets, which correspond to verb tables on pages 22-27 in the middle
section of this dictionary. Jouer is a verb ending in –er so it follows the
same pattern as verb number [28] donner, which is set out on page 35.

9 How would you say ‘We played football ’?

Phrases containing nouns and adjectives also need to be adapted. You

may need to make the noun plural, or the adjective feminine or plural.
Remember that some nouns and adjectives have irregular feminine or
plural forms and that this is shown in the entry.

10 How would you say ‘The jewels are beautiful ’?

© HarperCollins Publishers, 2007

Don’t overuse the dictionary

It takes time to look up words so try to avoid using the dictionary

unnecessarily, especially in exams. Think carefully about what you
want to say and see if you can put it another way, using words you
already know. To rephrase things you can:

> Use a word with a similar meaning. This is particularly easy with
adjectives, as there are a lot of words which mean good, bad, big etc
and you’re sure to know at least one.

> Use negatives: if the cake you made was a total disaster, you could
just say it wasn’t very good.

> Use particular examples instead of general terms. If you are asked to
describe the sports facilities in your area, and time is short, don’t look
up facilities – say something like ‘In our town there is a swimming pool
and a football ground.’

11 You want to ask ‘Have you got any pets?’. How could you avoid
using the word ‘pet’ if you don’t know it?
12 How could you say ‘The palace of Versailles is huge’ without
looking up the word ‘huge’ ?

You can also often guess the meaning of a French word by using
others to give you a clue. If you see the sentence ‘j’écoute de la
musique rap’, you may not know the meaning of the word écoute,
but you do know it’s a verb because it’s preceded by j’. Therefore it
must be something you can do to music: listen. So the translation is:
I listen to rap music.

13 In a description of a holiday centre you see a picture of bikes

and read ‘On peut louer des vélos: 10€ la journée’. You may not
know the meaning of ‘louer’, but you can see that you have to
pay 10 euros, which gives you a clue to what it could mean.
What can you do – ride bikes, borrow bikes or hire bikes?

© HarperCollins Publishers, 2007

Parts of speech

There are two entries for flat because this word can be a noun or an adjective.
It helps to choose correctly between entries if you know how to recognize
these different types of words.

Nouns and pronouns

Nouns often appear with words like a, the, this, that, my, your and his.
They can be singular (abbreviated to sing in the dictionary):
his dog her cat a street

or plural (abbreviated to pl in the dictionary):

the facts those people his shoes our holidays

They can be the subject of a verb:

Vegetables are good for you

or the object of a verb:

I play tennis

Words like I, me, you, he, she, him, her and they are pronouns. They can be used
instead of nouns. You can refer to a person as he or she or to a thing as it.

I bought my mother a box of chocolates.

14 Which three words are nouns in this sentence?
15 Which of the nouns is plural?
16 Which word is a pronoun?

French nouns are either masculine or feminine (abbreviated to masc

and fem). Masculine nouns are shown by le:
le bateau le chien le jardin

Feminine nouns are shown by la:

la porte la robe la souris

If a noun starts with a vowel or a vowel sound, then le or la becomes I’:

l’ami l’eau l’orage l’ histoire

© HarperCollins Publishers, 2007

 The plural forms of le, la and l’ is les. As in English, the plural of most
French nouns is made by adding s:
les chiens les portes les tables

If the singular form already ends in s, or if it ends in x, then you don’t

have to add anything:
l’ananas les ananas
la voix les voix

Sometimes, however, the plural form is irregular and this is shown in

the entry:

le cheval (pl les chevaux) noun horse noun

horse le cheval (pl les chevaux)

Je me brosse les dents tous les soirs.

17 Two words in this sentence are nouns. Which ones?
18 Are they singular or plural?
19 What is the plural form of ‘le choix’ ?
20 Look in the dictionary to find the plural form of ‘le travail’.

Adjectives

Flat can be an adjective as well as a noun. Adjectives describe nouns:

your tyre can be flat, you can have a pair of flat shoes.

21 ‘Dark’ is an adjective in one of these sentences and a noun in

the other. Which is which?
I’m not afraid of the dark.
She’s got dark hair.

French adjectives can be masculine or feminine, singular or plural,

depending on the noun they describe:

un petit garçon (masc sing)

une petite fille (fem sing = masculine singular + e)
trois petits garçons (masc pl = masculine singular + s)
trois petites filles (fem pl = masculine singular + es)

© HarperCollins Publishers, 2007

 The masculine and feminine singular forms of regular adjectives are
shown on both sides of the dictionary.

So if you want to find out what sort of shoes des chaussures plates
are, look under plat.

To form the plural of adjectives in French, you generally add s to both

masculine and feminine forms.

If the masculine form ends in s or x, then you don’t need to add s to

make the masculine plural.

masc sing fem sing masc pl fem pl

passé passée passés passées
gris grise gris grises
anxieux anxieuse anxieux anxieuses
agréable agréable agréables agréables

Some adjectives remain the same whether they’re masculine,

feminine or plural. This is also shown in the dictionary:

arrière (fem+pl arrière) adjective back adjective, adverb

Usee also arrière noun Usee also back noun, verb
back arrière (fem+pl arrière)

22 What is the feminine singular form of ‘vert’?

23 What is the masculine plural form of ‘aimable’?
24 What forms can ‘heureux’ be?
25 What is the masculine plural form of ‘gras’? And the feminine
singular (look in the dictionary for this one)?

Verbs

She’s going to record the programme for me.

His time in the race was a new world record.

Record in the first sentence is a verb. In the second, it is a noun.

© HarperCollins Publishers, 2007

 One way to recognize a verb is that it frequently comes with a
pronoun such as I, you or she, or with somebody’s name. Verbs can
relate to the present, the past or the future. They have a number of
different forms to show this: I’m going (present), he will go (future),
and Nicola went by herself (past). Often verbs appear with to: they
promised to go. This basic form of the verb is called the infinitive.

In this dictionary, verbs are preceded by ‘to’, so you can identify them
at a glance. No matter which of the four previous examples you want
to translate, you should look up ‘to go’, not ‘going’ or ‘went’. If you
want to translate ‘I thought’, look up ‘to think’.

26 What would you look up to translate the verbs in these

phrases?
I went she’s crying he was lying
I did it he’s out they’ve gone

Verbs have different endings, depending on whether you are talking

about je, tu, nous, ils etc: j’aime, tu aimes, nous aimons, ils
aiment etc. They also have different forms for the present, future,
past etc. Nous mangeons (we eat = present), nous avons mangé
(we ate = past). Manger is the infinitive and is the form that appears
in the dictionary.

Sometimes the verb changes completely between the infinitive form

and the je, tu, ils etc form. For example, I go is je vais, but to go is
aller, and nous faisons (we do) comes from faire (to do). J’ai fait
(I have done or I did) also comes from faire.

On pages 28-48 of the middle section of this dictionary, you will

find 21 of the most important French verbs shown in full. On the
French – English side of the dictionary you will find a number beside
all French verbs. When you look up that number in the verb tables on
pages 22-27, you will be shown the verb forms for that type of verb.
This will help you to work out which is the correct verb form you need,
whether that verb is regular or irregular.

27 Which verb form does the verb plaisanter follow?

© HarperCollins Publishers, 2007

Adverbs

An adverb is a word that describes a verb or an adjective:

Write soon. Check your work carefully.
They arrived late. The film was very good.

In the sentence ‘The swimming pool is open daily’, daily is an adverb

describing the adjective open. In the phrase ‘my daily routine’, daily is an
adjective describing the noun routine. We use the same word in English
but to get the right French translation, it is important to know if it’s being
used as an adjective or an adverb. When you look up daily you find:

daily adjective, adverb

1 quotidien (fem quotidienne)
P It’s part of my daily routine. Ça fait partie
de mes occupations quotidiennes.
2 tous les jours
P The pool is open daily. La piscine est
ouverte tous les jours.

The examples show you daily being used as an adjective and as an

adverb and will help you choose the right French translation.

Take the sentence ‘The menu changes daily’.

28 Does ‘daily’ go with the noun ‘menu’ or the verb ‘changes’?
29 Is it an adverb or an adjective?
30 How would you translate ‘daily’ in this sentence?

Prepositions

Prepositions are words like for, with and across, which are followed
by nouns or pronouns:
I’ve got a present for David. Come with me. He ran across the road.

The party’s over.

The shop’s just over the road.

31 In one of these sentences ‘over’ is an adjective describing

a noun, in the other it is a preposition followed by a noun.
Which is which?

10

© HarperCollins Publishers, 2007

Answers

1 the French side

2 nager
3 nouveau comes after Noël
4 chou–fleur comes after chocolat
5 the first entry (the adjective entry)
6 C’est une question très difficile.
7 J’aime jouer au billard américain.
8 they must all have a medical examination
9 Nous avons joué au football.
10 Les bijoux sont beaux.
11 you could ask ‘Have you got a cat or a dog?’
12 you could say ‘Very big.’
13 you can hire bikes
14 mother, box and chocolates are nouns
15 chocolates is plural
16 I is a pronoun
17 dents and soirs are nouns
18 they are both plural
19 les choix
20 les travaux
21 dark in the first sentence is a noun and in the second, it’s an
adjective
22 verte
23 aimables
24 masculine singular or plural
25 the masculine plural form is gras and the feminine singular form is
grasse
26 to go, to cry, to lie, to do, to be, to go
27 plaisanter follows the same verb form as donner, number [28]
28 daily goes with the verb changes
29 it is an adverb
30 tous les jours
31 in the first sentence, over is an adjective and in the second, it’s a
preposition

11

© HarperCollins Publishers, 2007